Evaluation of questions 1, 2, 3 ,4

1. How did you use media technologies in the construction

and research, planning and

evaluation stages?

Research

For our Media production task we got the choice to produce either a documentary, film trailer or music video, I chose to produce a documentary as they have always appealed to me. Then I had to decide what I wanted my documentary to focus on, eventually I decided that I wanted to do it about an infamous serial killer as I find documentaries like this very interesting. I took inspiration from different documentaries when planning my production for example I looked at Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, Serial Killers: The Real Life Hannibal Lecters and Silence of the Lambs. I used these documentary to get an idea as to what content I should add in, however for the actual style of my documentary I took a lot of inspiration from Louis Theroux’s documentary style. I used many websites in order to research relevant media texts websites such as google to find the websites I needed I used Netflix and YouTube, to watch clips of the documentaries to see what they had included I also used Wikipedia and IMDB to see when they were released and how they presented them.

Planning

Once I had completed my research I decided it was time to write my ideas down I started off by roughly writing my ideas down in a list just so I could get an ideas as to what order I wanted things to be in and so I knew what sorts of things I wanted to include which gave me a rough idea as to what was going to be include and in what order. Once I had done this I started on my storyboard this gave me a better idea as to what each shot as going to look like as well as adding small amounts of dialogue so I got an idea as to what the characters would be talking about. Once I had completed the storyboard I decided to make an animatic using adobe premier editing software, this gave me the opportunity to get an idea of how long my production was going to be.

Production & post production

which was an interview in a magazine about the upcoming documentaryWhen it came down to actually filming the documentary I used a Cannon Legria digital camera and for taking still photos I used a regular Canon still camera. When filming I used a lot of hand held camera shots as a lot o shot included me walking and talking to the camera however I did use a tripod when I was interviewing people. The filming locations included my house, Ware high-street, the school, Ware park and my garage.For my post production I used Adobe Premier this is because I could use it a school and because I used it last year and so I was familiar with the programme which made it easier and quicker as I did not have to learn to use a new software.I also used Adobe Photoshop to produce my first ancillary task which was a poster for the documentary, and I used publisher for my second ancillary task which was an interview about the upcoming documentary

Evaluation

For my Evaluation I decided to use PowerPoint as again it is a very familiar programme and I have used it throughout my schooling life in many different subjects which again makes it much easier as know where everything is and how to use it.It also meant I could make it look more professional as I could change the background colour and format and change the font style, size and colour making it look more professional and interesting.

2.How effective was the combination of your main product

and ancillary tasks?

Links between Documentary and Poster

The poster I chose to make for my documentary does follow the conventions set by other already existing documentaries as it has a fairly simple layout as do most documentaries do. The reason the poster for my documentary is quite simple is because it is supposed to be a documentary about real events and so it would be inappropriate to have a dramatic flashy cover, this is why my poster is just a picture of me standing in front of a back drop of a derelict building which is supposed to be one of the sites where one of Clifford Randal's victims was found. The name of the documentary is in a large font at the top so it leaves more of an impact on the people looking at it also along the bottom I have the images of the awards the documentary has won to show it is a successful documentary.

Links between the documentary and the newspaper interview

The link between the newspaper interview and the documentary is that it is the presenter being interviewed also all of the questions are relevant to the documentary such as why I chose to produce the documentary and whether it suited the intended purpose, I also added in a picture of me underneath the heading and added in a picture of the documentary in action as well as a picture of the serial killer himself. I took inspiration from an interview with Louis Theroux from the guardian newspaper which is where I got the idea of doing a single page spread interview. At first I thought about doing a review but I then decided it would be better to do an interview so I could explain some of the choices I made behind the documentary.

3.What have you learned from your

audience feedback?

My Target Audience

The primary audience for the documentary I produced are people between the ages 30 – 65 as they would be more interested In watching serious documentaries, I do however understand it would attract a secondary audiences for example some teenagers may want to watch it. The target audience is not specific to gender, ethnicity or race, however I expect it would mainly be watched by people in Britain because it was made in Britain it is also a documentary about an incident that happened in Britain. We based our audience on people in the socio economic groups A – C1 as they would be more likely to watch my documentary. I targeted my documentary towards adults as the style of documentary I produced is for more of a mature taste and is on quite a dark subject that would not appeal to younger viewers.

Feedback

In order to find out what improvements needed to be made I needed to get feedback from people within my target audience to gather this information our teacher set up a showcase day whereby everyone In the class got to showcase their productions, other teachers from the school were also invited to come along and watch. The teachers that did come along fitted in to my target audience and so they were able to give me valid feedback. One piece of feedback I got was that some of the shots where I was outside were too quiet and they could only hear the wind blowing into the microphone on the camera and not what I was saying. They also said that at some of the cuts that link certain scenes together where slightly abrupt, for example when it cuts from day one to the second day was to abrupt and people were unaware that it was going from one day to another. I did however get positive feedback as most of them said they liked the idea of the documentary itself they also said that the interview scenes where good and the questions being asked where interesting.

Changes based on feedback

with this feedback I received I instantly went back out to film the scenes where I was outdoors however this time I took a microphone with me so I could pick up more sound I used an extension lead so that I could get it nearer to my face so it would pick up my voice and not any background sounds. From the feedback I got about the cuts from one scene to another I decided to go back and add in some transitions so that it looked a lot smoother, for example at the part where it cuts from one day to another I added in a fade to black as this implies time has passed and is less abrupt than a quick cut.

4.In what ways does you media product

develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

developed

I incorporated many different contentions in my documentary in order to give my audience the feel of the genre and so I used many techniques that are also used in the genre.

One convention I used a lot throughout my documentary is the use of hand held shots, there are a lot of shots of me walking toward the camera talking about where I am going and who I am seeing, there are also a lot of tracking shots where the camera is behind me as it follows me where I am going.

Another convention I used is cross cutting I used this a few times throughout the documentary for example when I was interviewing the friend of Clifford Randal's final victim I used this technique so you could see both my reaction and the reaction of the person I am interviewing and is an effective technique.

Challenged

One way I challenged conventions is by not having the person in question feature in the documentary, as the documentary was about the fictional character Clifford Randal I did not include him in the documentary. Although I had thought about including an interview whereby you could only see half of his face, however I decided against the idea as I did not know what questions to ask without it sounding and looking silly.

Another way I challenged documentary style conventions is by using cross cutting in some of my interview scenes, this challenges conventions because usually they get both the presenter and the other person in one shot and some times the presented is not in the shot but behind the camera e.g. vox pops. The reason I used cross cutting is so you could see the reaction of the person being interviewed and my reaction.